On Faith and the Creed

Contents

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–25

1. 1Augustine explains that the brief Creed memorized by new Christians needs a fuller treatment to protect it against heretics.
2. 2Against those who posit an uncreated matter, Augustine argues that the almighty God made all things, even formless matter, out of nothing.
3. 3The Son is the Word through whom the Father created all things and through whom the hidden Father is made known.
4. 4Unlike our words, which we make, God begot his Word from himself, the perfect expression of what he is.
5. 5The Son is neither made, nor begotten in time, nor inferior to the Father; both those who identify him with the Father and those who call him a creature are excluded.
6. 6Augustine reads “The Lord created me” of Christ's humanity, the humble way back to God, and distinguishes the only-begotten Son by nature from sons by adoption.
7. 7Because God alone truly is, nothing can be contrary to him except non-being.
8. 8Christ, born of the Virgin through the Spirit, took up the whole human being, body, soul, and rational spirit, because what he did not take up would not be saved.
9. 9Against those who deny that Christ had a human mother, Augustine explains Jesus' words at Cana and his question “Who is my mother?”
10. 10Birth from a woman could not defile the Word, just as sunlight is not soiled by the filth it shines on.
11. 11Christ also died a shameful death; Pilate's name dates it, and the new tomb, like the virgin womb, was used by no one before or after.
12. 12Christ rose on the third day as the firstborn of the adopted children of God.
13. 13Christ's body ascended into heaven as a spiritual body, wholly subject to the spirit; where and how it is there is not to be asked.
14. 14Christ's sitting at the Father's right hand means supreme blessedness and judicial power, not a bodily posture.
15. 15Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead; his temporal dispensation, unlike his eternal generation, is, was, and will be.
16. 16The Holy Spirit is consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father and the Son; each is God, yet the Trinity is one God, not three gods.
17. 17Examples of spring, river, and drink, of root, trunk, and branches, and of three cups from one spring show that three things can share one name, though they are not likenesses of God.
18. 18Texts that seem to make the Son less than the Father refer either to his assumed humanity or to his receiving his being from the Father, not to an inequality of nature.
19. 19Augustine reports, without adopting it, the view that the Holy Spirit is the deity and mutual love that unites the Father and the Son, with its scriptural proofs.
20. 20Whatever the truth of that view, the faith is to be held firmly: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each God, one God of one substance, each always himself.
21. 21We believe in the holy catholic church, from which heretics are excluded by false belief about God and schismatics by breaking brotherly love.
22. 22Our sins are forgiven only if we forgive others; so we believe in the forgiveness of sins.
23. 23Spirit, soul, and body are restored in order; the resurrection of the flesh means that this visible flesh itself will rise.
24. 24The risen flesh will become a heavenly body; since even the philosophers grant that every body can change into every other, God can transform it in an instant.
25. 25The Creed's few words lead believers through faith and right living to a pure heart that understands what it believes.